Education for Peace and Security in Great Lakes Region of Africa Within the Context of Ubuntu: A Critic of Unipolarity

• In Event: Peace, justice and education in (post)-conflict contexts

Abstract

The unipolar nation-states framed political conventions, national conferences and dialogues, and signed peace agreements with their legalism and attempts at prevention of violent conflicts. But these attempts are still illusory as they are unable to produce conditions and policies that can lead to sustainable peace, security and development in the case of the Great Lakes Region of Africa. It is worth noting some important regional achievements in areas of macro-economic development, medical and information technology, new consciousness of some new billionaires in all the continents in making important contributions to save the world, diversification of education curriculum, and some mild solidarity among people’s efforts towards electoral democracies and environmental movements. However, post-Cold War African politics is still generally a space of high political and social tensions and contestations. This space is under the firm control and imperatives of the old dominant social paradigm (DSP): (in the use of science/technology and the prevalence of free trade, and militarism). This situation has implications towards a structural and comprehensive understanding of the nature of violent conflicts and the role of education in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.

In more than two decades, some people and ethnic groups in this subregion of Africa have been suffering from atrocities directly related to actions and outcomes of long-time policies of extreme militarism and civilian dictatorial regimes, major political and societal instability, the absence of, and/or the collapse of, the state, and weakening of societal-state relations. The combination of the dynamics of two or more of the above factors has led to civil wars, wars of invasions, personal and societal vengeance, ethnic wars, sexual violence against girls and women, extreme poverty, and massive pillage of human and natural resources by various groups, some states and multinationals in some specific locations or subregions, especially in East of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

However, the above description does not reflect relative stability, consolidation of democracy and progress that also have been taking place in other countries in the sub-region.

Using a holistic and structuralist approach, and textual and historical methodological dimensions, I will first interrogate the existing approaches and outcomes of old/existing education systems; then, second I will conceptualize peace education; and third I will attempt to demonstrate why and how such education is needed as the new dialogical foundation for setting up a theoretical thinking and an ideological political formula that can cement peace, security and development founded on Ubuntu.

I claim that collective down up perspectives along peace education will create conditions, which are conducive to sustainable peace.

The outcome of this work is a reflective analytical policy framework to be recommended to all the major actors in the Great Lakes Region.

Author

• Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo, Cornell University and Wells College